President William Ruto/FILE
President William Ruto has announced that a national school meals programme will begin in all 47 counties in the first term of 2027.
Ruto said the programme would cover learners in lower primary, upper primary and junior secondary schools across the country as part of a wider effort to strengthen social protection and support poor and vulnerable families.
The President made the commitment on Tuesday in a speech read on his behalf by Labour and Social Protection Cabinet Secretary Alfred Mutua during the opening of the Fourth Kenya Social Protection Conference at the Kenya School of Government in Kabete, Nairobi.
“Fragmented approaches to school feeding have also constrained our capacity to deliver impact and scale and sustainable sustainability required by national aspirations,” he said.
“Therefore, I commit my government to the progressive establishment of a national schools needs programme.”
The President did not indicate whether all schools in the 47 counties would be included.
“I further direct the Ministry of Education, working in close collaboration with the Labour and Social Protection, the National Treasury, and other relevant stakeholders to develop the policy, financing, governance and implementation framework required for a first national rollout commencing in the first school term of 2027,” he said.
The commitment comes days after Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale said Kenya was working to expand school meals from the current 2.6 million learners to 10 million by 2030.
Duale was speaking in New York while representing Ruto at a high-level meeting on child survival and nutrition.
The target of reaching 10 million learners by 2030 is not new. The government first committed to it in 2024, but this is the first time it has provided a proper timeline for a national rollout.
The government currently provides meals to about 2.6 million learners. The programme is focused largely on vulnerable children, including those in arid and semi-arid areas and other food-insecure communities.
An Institute of Public Finance analysis has estimated that feeding 10 million learners at an indicative cost of Sh20 per child per school day for 200 school days could require about Sh40 billion a year.
Kenya has also been promoting a home-grown school meals model that links schools with local farmers, allowing public money spent on school food to support local agriculture.
Ruto also announced plans to establish and capitalise a Social Protection Fund to make government support for vulnerable Kenyans more predictable.
He said Kenya needed a system that could protect families from poverty, disability, old age and climate-related shocks.
“It requires us to build a system that gives every Kenyan family confidence that when adversity comes, the nation will stand with them,” he said.
“I commit to establishing and capitalising the Social Protection Fund, to expedite actualisation of the Social Protection Fund, to make that indexation of benefits predictable, and to increase the innovative coverage to 2.5 million Kenyan households.”
The government also defended its record on payments under the Inua Jamii programme.
Principal Secretary for Social Protection Joseph Motari said the government had expanded the programme and changed how beneficiaries receive their money.
“Today, the government is providing Sh3.5 billion every month to vulnerable Kenyans. We have also moved from commercial banks to mobile money, particularly M-Pesa, making payments easier, faster and more accessible.”
He said Inua Jamii beneficiaries had increased from 1.2 million to 1.7 million, bringing an additional 500,000 vulnerable Kenyans into the programme.
The government has a target of reaching 2.5 million Kenyans.
CS Mutua defended Ruto over delays in paying beneficiaries, saying the President had directed that if there was a delay in paying beneficiaries, his own salary and those of ministers should also not be paid.
“The salary of the President of Kenya, the government officials, the cabinet members, is only remitted to the accounts after Inua Jamii recipients have received their monies,” Mutua said. “So they receive it first; the President of this country is paid last.”
The three-day Kenya Social Protection Conference runs from September 29 to October 1.
The conference brought together about 500 local and international delegates from government, development agencies and other organisations under the theme, “Re-imagining Social Protection in an Evolving Socio-Economic Landscape and Climate Change: Strengthening Adaptive, Transformative and Sustainable Social Protection Systems for Inclusive Development in Kenya.”
